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Author: Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan, Sinologist (ex-Diplomat), Editor, Analyst, Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan. (E-mail: [email protected]).
The U.S. President Joe Biden’s two-day “summit for democracy” was suspected as a conspiracy even before it began. Now it has turned into a vile drama for Cold War hostility that greatly threatens world democracy, human rights, and peace – the very antithesis of what the hubristic Americans claim.
On the second day of this virtual conference hosted by President Joe Biden, news emerged of the British High Court ruling in favor of the U.S. government that Julian Assange is to be extradited to the United States to face trumped-up charges of espionage which could result in a death sentence. Assange is being persecuted for exposing massive U.S. war crimes, crimes against humanity, global espionage felonies, and corruption. His case is a hideous warning that free speech and independent journalism are under ruthless attack by the U.S. authorities. In other words, the biggest enemy of the most basic of democratic rights in the United States government – and yet at the same time, we have this grotesque conference hosted by Biden declaring support for democracy. Height of hypocrisy!
Several reputed contributors have been banned from writing on the virtual summit on democracy under the threat of massive financial penalties. This is because the U.S. government makes the slanderous claim that SCF is directed by Russian state intelligence. See this recent interview by one of our well-known former contributors Daniel Lazare who has denounced what he calls a move to censor free speech and critical thinking.
President Joe Biden was seen addressing a blur of TV screens each displaying the face of leaders of nations invited by Washington to the “summit for democracy”. It resembled more a scene from a satirical movie. Funny!
The list of participants invited to Biden’s fiction drama is shot through with inconsistencies and double standards. Even the normally dutiful U.S. media were obliged to note the incongruities and lack of principle in the virtual gathering of 110 countries. Some of those attending were classified as less democratic than some of those excluded noted the U.S.-based Freedom House.
It is blatant that the convocation by Biden was aimed at self-serving geopolitical power-play. The territory of Taiwan was invited as a representative of democracy while China was excluded. Under U.S. law, the One China policy deems Beijing as having sovereignty over Taiwan. So, the pointed invitation of Taipei over Beijing is an astounding provocation to China by the U.S. A deliberate attempt to offend China and create tension.
Ukraine was invited to attend while Russia was also excluded. Since the U.S.-backed coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 against an elected government, Ukraine has become a byword for corruption and the killing of journalists. The farcical invite by Biden is another geopolitical provocation that will embolden the Kiev regime to escalate further its hostilities towards Russia.
While ignoring some of the well-established democracies, he has not invited Turkey, Egypt, Iran, etc.
What Biden’s jamboree is all about is a flagrant attempt to divide the world into a Cold War demarcation. Russia and China have rebuked the initiative for harming international cooperation and increasing conflict.
Pakistan kept itself away from such a dividing platform and remained a non-aligned or neutral entity.
There is not a scintilla of substance in what the Biden administration is attempting. The meaning and purpose of the “summit for democracy” is the opposite. It is about creating tensions, conflict, undermining democracy, and fomenting war.
But it really shows the absolutely dangerous hubris of Washington. It somehow is deluded in thinking that it is uniquely endowed to host a conference on democracy when in fact it has no shame about being a ringmaster for conflict and war.
The United States’ history of genocide against native Americans, its decades of illegal foreign wars of aggression and destruction of nations, its relentless subversion of foreign governments – all of this and more are glaring proof that Washington is the center of global criminality. In order to manipulate the world under its hegemony, we have the risible attempt to corral nations into enemy camps of supposed democracy and autocracy.
The launch of Arab spring, the Iraq war, the Destruction of Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan, killing of millions of Muslims in the middle-east, made much more homeless. Sanctions of political rival nations, imposing visa restriction of a specific religion, ethnic groups, and nations, discrimination against yellow race, etc, is American democracy???
The objective reality is of a changing world, whereby U.S. capitalist, hyper-militarized power is failing amid the emergence of a multipolar international order. That fundamental historic development cannot be countered by futile machinations.
Of immense importance, too, the spectacle of hypocrisy seen this week also fatally undermines the authority of the U.S. governing system in the eyes of its own people.
Biden offering blandishments about democracy comes across as crass Marie-Antoinette stuff when so many American citizens are dying from a pandemic that their government won’t spend money on to properly eradicate; when so many citizens are struggling with poverty and trying to feed their families; when Congress passes an annual military budget of $770 billion; and when millions of Americans are being barred from voting by new racist election laws.
Biden’s summit for democracy is disgusting in its fraudulence, not just towards the wider world but towards his own nation.
This vile circus of Cold War theatrics that Biden oversaw this week is really a Swansong of failed American “democracy”
Many nations and individuals have suffered a lot during the cold war, and now realize the harm of the cold war. Now, everyone is opposing any new cold war, but, President Joe Biden is launching and imposing all types of cold war tactics, like sanctions, restrictions, coercion, media war, cyberwar, narrative war, and distortion of facts, the spread of fake news and fabricated stories, he will not succeed.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
